Black Women's Ways of Knowing

Black Women’s Ways of Knowing

1.       Feared Knower- Knowledge and the acquisition of it incites an emotion of fear. Put in a historical context, black women have been punished or killed for learning to read or write. The legal persecution of black women’s learning has instilled generational apprehension about knowledge and directly connects it to fear. Knowledge is associated with death; in a literal sense and also in a symbolic way---a social death, financial death, political death, spiritual death.

2.       Observational Knowledge- Black women who learn about others by watching them; more specifically black women learn about their oppressor by watching the contradictions in his actions versus his words; not participatory; black women also learn through other black women’s experiences and that observation informs her own decisions.

3.       Self –Exploration- black women acquire knowledge by associating with other in institutions (education, work, etc.). They learn by having encounters with others. Black women also self-explore through the encounters they have with themselves. This is the internal conflict that arises from the contradiction between received knowledge and the self. As black women learn that they are not as others have defined them to be (opposing received knowledge), they learn more about themselves through internal conflict.

4.       Signified Knowledge- knowledge that is received and then made to be her own.

5.       Womanist Knowledge- “othermothering”; heightened sense of responsibility to family and community. Generational Womanism. Being “grown” or womanish; Young black women who seem to have a heightened sense of awareness about the world. Knowledge before their time about the inner workings of social structures and lived experiences.